


come on now cruel city, with lonely eyes

by braigwen_s



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Autistic Havelock Vetinari, Backstory, But Either Way It's Not Quite Developed Wings, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Past Poverty & Lonliness, Rooftop Adventures, Very Mild Coarse Language And One Mention Of The Sex Word, You Can Read This Relationship As Romantic Or Platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:53:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27428989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/braigwen_s/pseuds/braigwen_s
Summary: Vimes sighed, stretched his legs out on the roof in front of him.  Breathed in the night, and tried not to think about how comfortable he felt gallivanting over rooftops with the Patrician to escape Lady Selachii and not assassins – comfortable enough to be having this conversation with the him.
Relationships: Havelock Vetinari & Samuel Vimes, Havelock Vetinari/Samuel Vimes
Comments: 11
Kudos: 51





	come on now cruel city, with lonely eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'Cruel City' by the Augustines.

Vetinari waved away Vimes’ proffered help and settled into a seated position next to a small chimney stack, balancing his cane between his knees. He looked back at Vimes and sighed, like a breeze filtered through a fire grate, and said “You are not my aunt, you know”. It took Vimes a moment to work out that was the Vetinari equivalent of ‘you’re not my mum’. He wondered how old Vetinari had been when his mother had died, or if he’d simply never known his mother at all. He’d never heard anything about Vetinari’s father either, if he’d had one – maybe he’d just had a mother and an ‘aunt,’ instead of two mothers, and posh people were shifty about stuff like that. Anyway, it had always just been ‘his aunt,’ even back when Vimes had never met the man and drank his meals.

Vimes hadn’t known his mum’s siblings, because he’d been an only child and that was thought of as ‘bad luck,’ so relatives hadn’t liked to go near him. And, of course, he’d never met his dad’s siblings, if he’d had them. The ‘Vimes’ name was bad luck, too. Most of them died younger than parents of only children. He made a mental note to look up the Vetinaris (or was that Vetinarii?); maybe they were in _Twurp’s Peerage_. At least they weren’t in the College of Heraldry, anymore. Ah-ha.

Right. He wasn’t Vetinari’s mum. “Maybe I’m not,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t still help.” For some reason only the gods knew he started to explain that. “Around where I grew up, that was the only way that folks survived. Pooling everything, so it wasn’t just family. The rest of the neighbourhood was sort of in on my raising, or at least they were meant to be.” And for some reason not even any gods knew he kept talking. “But really, we were bad luck, being only two of us as we were. So it was always just me and my mum.”

Vetinari frowned. “I hadn’t thought the Morpork side kept a taboo around single motherhood.”

Vimes sighed, stretched his legs out on the roof in front of him. Breathed in the night, and tried not to think about how comfortable he felt gallivanting over rooftops with the Patrician to escape Lady Selachii and not assassins – comfortable enough to be having this conversation with him. He was saying things he’d kept so locked-up deep he’d never told anybody but Fred and Sybil. Was he as close to him as Fred was, now? “It depends what kind that means,” he said. “Dad dead, or dad missing, you’re right, that’s fine. But if it’s the kid that’s single, y’know, an only child… it says something about the mum, that she didn’t keep them alive, or that she’s got the pox, or summat.”

He could feel his language falling back into the old broadness and dropped half-words of his youth, that he had been surrounded by. Mostly, he talked like that around Fred and Nobby, or on purpose to piss off nobs. He decided he didn’t mind too much. If Vetinari had a problem, Vimes could just shove him off the rooftops and say he’d slipped. He turned his head to look at him, and saw him glancing away, up at the sky, like he’d been trying to hide staring.

“I was an only child,” he said, sort of sideways – the words were spoken into the sky, but Vimes knew they were for him and not the distant, smogged-out stars.

“I know,” said Vimes. “Or at least, I figured so. You were brought up by your aunt, right? The one in Pseudopolis.”

“She lives in Pseudopolis now, yes. At the time, we lived in … on the Sto Lat plains, in villages, or Ankh-Morpork. We moved around.”

Something was different with Vetinari’s voice, now, too. The vowels were ducking up and down into a sort of pitched cadence. His speaking didn’t sound as flat, though, Vimes noted, the sounds were as sharp as ever. At first Vimes thought the man was mocking him, and he’d only been joking about shoving him off the roof, so what was he supposed to do? But then he got his head back in order, and figured that was Vetinari’s own native accent he was shifting back to. He tried to picture a tiny, young Vetinari, almost brand-new to the city, in shiny clothes with white ruffles that were not black. His brain revolted at the concept, and the image was not conjured, but he did try. He did picture the travel, though, packing up a little bag of things – because he had been rich, hadn’t he, he’d gone to the Assassins’ Guild school, that was for posh lads and these days lasses, and rich folks had things to pack – and dutifully hopping into a coach or onto a horse’s back, or something, and never seeing that town again. “Must’ve been hard to make friends,” he hedged, “never sticking around places.”

“It was not the places. It was me.” Vetinari’s face was entirely neutral, even relaxed. Vimes wasn’t sure he could ever remember seeing Vetinari with his face relaxed. He let out a long, slow breath.

“You have friends now,” said Vimes.

Vetinari made no reply.

“Sybil, for one,” continued Vimes. He wasn’t sure whether to include himself, for a moment, and then nearly slapped himself around the head for the absurdity of that hesitation. Hadn’t they clambered out of a window and onto the Palace roof together not an hour ago? And hadn’t Vimes held him firm when his leg began to slip, and hadn’t they snuck over rooftops until they were a mile away like kids? He was uneducated, jumped-up street trash with perpetual defiance baked into him, and Vetinari had chosen him anyway. Chosen him as an escapade companion, and as his guard, and as his Commander and the Duke of bloody Ankh. That had to mean something to Vimes, that he meant that much to Vetinari. He opened his mouth, and didn’t clamp it right shut. “And me,” he said.

“And Rosemary Palm,” he said, and it took Vimes a few attempts to work out that he was not, in fact, joking. That explained why he visited her house every third week, at least. Vimes had pretty well always known he didn’t go there for _sex_. But shit, was it just those three, then? Sybil and him and Rosie Palm? Was that even an unusually low amount of friends? He had Fred, and Nobby, and Vetinari, apparently, as well as Angua and sort of Reg and Dorfl and, heck, Sybil counted too, didn’t she? They weren’t only husband and wife; they got along a lot better than some of those, and not because they never talked to each other. When he had been – well, time was he’d just had Fred and Nobby, Nobby and Fred, and that was two. Now his tally was at seven, apparently. He got the impression that was fairly low, too, for most people, who tended to gossip along with half their street every few nights. So, then, yes, three friends wasn’t a lot. The Patrician didn’t have many friends, and it wasn’t because he was a megalomaniac dictator, because he, well, wasn’t. It was because he was … he was him.

 _What did that even mean?_ Thought Vimes, then had to admit fake ignorance had never helped, and almost always, in fact, hurt. It was because Vetinari was … y’know, how he wasn’t normal. You could feel it on him, that he learned how to smile from a mirror, and learned everything else he knew from obsessively consuming books. There was a word for those people, sort of, but he had never heard anyone apply it to the Patrician; ‘pin-collector’. Nobody ever called him that, presumably from basic fear of death, but Vimes, at least, had worked it out. “Yeah,” he said, “and her.”

He sat back, watching the lights of the city. After a few minutes Vetinari’s gaunt face, pallid in the gloom and the smog like a beacon, looked at him again. His hand had moved an inch closer.

**Author's Note:**

> Vetinari also has Margolotta as a friend, but he knows Vimes doesn't like her so he chooses not to mention it.


End file.
